Step 1: Initial phone call with recruiter, as expected.

Step 2: Take-home coding challenge.

The challenge was to build a form in React, with validation and a nice UI. It was time-boxed at 90 minutes, which wasn't very realistic but also not strictly enforced. A good challenge, as it's very relevant and similar to typical frontend work.

Step 3: Technical phone screen.

This seemed redundant. I had just submitted code, so why the need to see more? The format was awkward: an engineer presented the problem via CoderPad and then remained silent while I solved it (even muting their microphone for much of the time). This confrontational style was off-putting and made me question if I wanted to continue if this represented their engineering culture. The problem was to write an interpreter to evaluate math in a nonsensical format string. I'm not a quick algorithm solver, so it took me a bit, but I came up with a relatively clean solution that passed all test cases. The interviewer then wanted to know the exact time complexity of my solution. Given that such exact analysis isn't relevant to most frontend work, I responded, "I don't know, it's not great because there are nested loops, but I'd Google it if I needed an exact answer." The interviewer (a backend engineer) did not like that answer. 🙄

A rejection email arrived the next day, as expected. I had already mentally written off the company due to their outdated, confrontational interview process.

Create a credit card form in React, given a wireframe design and certain scope-limiting assumptions. Include validation and UX niceties.

Write an interpreter to evaluate strings of nonsense math notation, respecting order of operations indicated by (possibly nested) parentheses.